


Prayer

by Brighid



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-03
Updated: 2012-08-03
Packaged: 2017-11-11 07:57:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/476314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brighid/pseuds/Brighid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This, between them, is sacred.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prayer

**Author's Note:**

> Just a noodle one day I felt blah.

Late afternoon sunlight hits the walls of their tent at an angle, making the sides flare gold and amber. John can see dust motes moving through the air, dancing. He watches as Rodney packs away their infinitely precious cargo that they will carry home tomorrow, cradled in Rodney's pack, swaddled in every spare bit of clothing they've got.

He smiles when Rodney straightens up and reaches out to pull him closer. Rodney's body is painted in dark blue and burnt ochre and he smells of incense. When John touches him, the paint smears, a radial blur of motion, an echo of his body moving over Rodney's and it makes his breath catch, even if it's just fingers over forearms, biceps, shoulders ... Rodney reaches out, stills John's hand, presses his marked skin against John's hopeful nakedness. Later, breathing hard through his nose, he steps back to trace the images he's left behind on John's skin. John feels like a blurred mirror-image, an echo of Rodney. It's strange and oddly ... overwhelming, to be marked, to be claimed in just that way. He leans in and kisses Rodney again and it tastes dark and sweet and earthy, like dates and figs. 

"Who knew it only took thirteen hours of body paint and two days of silent prayer to get a fully charged ZPM?" Rodney says breathlessly against John's jaw, his tongue catching on the stubble of three days waiting. 

"Like you prayed," John says dryly even as his hand is reaching under the edge of Rodney's wrapped sarong, unwinding him with deliberate intent.

Rodney's blue there, too, and when John kneels down to kiss the shadowed line of his groin there is the same hint of frankincense, and the tang of salt as well.

"For a ZPM, I prayed," Rodney says. "For this," he adds, soft-voiced, suddenly shy, "I prayed." His fingers reach down, stroke John's head. "I also may have power-napped, but that's just between us, okay?"

John laughs at that, and then leans in close and swallows Rodney's painted cock down. He wonders if his tongue will be blue when he's done, if he'll have a kool-aid smile for the rest of the day.

He finds he doesn't care.

Outside of the tent the late afternoon drowsiness is shattered utterly, beautifully into bright tesserae of sound as voices rises up in prayer, and then again as a hundred other voices rise up and echo the call back.

John doesn't know too much about prayer; he doesn't have the innocence or the experience for that sort of certainty. Still, he has Rodney's voice breaking, sighing, "God, John, christ!" and that, somehow, seems to fill the same place inside. Faith and hope and rare, bright joy: these things are sacred, and so this moment is a sacrament; John lets himself find peace in that.


End file.
